Inside Radio's Q&A with David Kantor, Radio Division CEO, Radio One.

Story by INSIDE RADIO

Radio One last October promoted Reach Media President David Kantor to Chief Executive of the company’s radio division, including the 55 stations in the 16 markets where the company operates.

Kantor has long been associated with network radio, having overseen ABC Radio Networks and AMFM until joining with syndicated host Tom Joyner to former Reach Media in 2003. They partnered with Radio One and eventually were folded into the company. Earlier in Kantor’s career he held executive positions with Cox Cable and Satellite Music Network.

As he nears his one year anniversary in his position, Kantor recently spoke with Inside Radio about business trends, political dollars, events, how he’s putting his touch on the combined radio platform and why he still goes on sales calls.


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You’ve been running Reach Media and local radio for 11 months now. How is it going so far?

I think it’s going really well. The programming ratings are up and that’s a combination of full implantation of Voltair over the last year and now Nielsen’s upgraded [eCBET] system. But we’ve also tightened up programming everywhere. And the coordination between the network and station talent is much greater than it’s ever been. So the integration between network and the station operation is even greater.

How does that work in terms of sales?

On the local side we’ve opened up some of the network talent to voicing local commercials. That was something that we didn’t do before that we now do—not just for Radio One but for some of our larger affiliates. That helps because if you can get a personality from a syndicated show to be an endorser on a local product, that helps sell ads locally. What we’re seeing is much more coordination between network and the national sales effort within the radio division. For example, if Tom [Joyner] is going to do a tour of five or six markets we didn’t care what markets they were. Now we would look to make sure three of those five are owned by Radio One. So we’re trying to tie in the local and national efforts.

How do you measure whether it’s working?

We measure it in sales. That’s the ultimate measurement. Both our network and national sales efforts year-to-date are doing well and are outpacing their marketplaces.

Is radio also working more with TV One and Interactive One?

We always go to advertisers interested in reaching the African-American marketplace using TV One, Interactive One and Radio One to accomplish a more multiplatform sale. But there is much more coordination within the radio division so far as we are doing more coordination between the radio stations and the network.

You’re a veteran of running radio networks, so how is it different managing a station group?

I have to be much more understanding of both points of view and doing what’s best for the opportunity. Take Washington, DC where we made the change of taking Tom [Joyner] off of “Magic 102.3” WMMJ and putting him on “News Talk 1450” WOL and putting Russ [Parr] on WMMJ. From a network point of view it would have been better to leave Tom where he was, but as a company as a whole Russ was doing so strongly on “Kiss” WKYS that it made sense to put him on WMMJ and rebuild that station. Now instead of looking whether it’s good for the network or stations—it’s what is the greater good for the whole company, not just an individual division.

So it’s given you a new perspective?

I’ve always have been an advocate for syndicated and network shows and that’s not changed. But in this capacity I have to be an advocate for what’s best for the individual situation and it may not be a syndicated solution.

Since you’ve taken over, Radio One has hired a bunch of salespeople. What’s behind that?

When I came in one of the things that I noticed immediately at the stations is that they had quite a few openings and they existed because we got rid of people, they left on their own, or we just had openings and we never filled them. I saw that as a problem. We had some stations that might have had 50% or 60% of the sales reps that they should have had. Clearly we could not properly cover all the opportunities out there. So we made a conscientious decision to reduce that and we did significantly. Now we’re in a normalized pattern and while we’re always going to have some turnover, I think we’re in a good position now.

In today’s world when there’s pressure to cut staff, it’s an interesting position to be in.

Ultimately the argument would be that you don’t cut salespeople if they’re performing. There is always a right number of salespeople to maintain a station’s revenue in a market.

Why has Radio One scaled back some of its events?

We’re looking closely at our events and making sure that the events are the best bottom line-oriented events. We’re looking at it from two points of view. In situations where we can generate bigger revenue from larger events we are dedicating more energy, time and resources. Events like Hot 107.9’s [WHTA] Birthday Bash in Atlanta, which has a huge opportunity to sell tens of thousands of tickets. At the same time we’re looking at how we can have tighter control on some of the expenses related to events. So, for example, if we are going to do an event in Cleveland, Detroit and Columbus, we might look to route that event over a Thursday-Friday-Saturday night and make a group deal for the talent and production costs. So even though our revenue may stay the same, the costs come down and it makes those events more profitable.

Has that meant fewer live events?

I think we did fewer this year. We weeded out some marginal events to focus on the bigger events. Now that we have a base line of events that are working, we would look to replicate some of those events in additional markets going forward.

So there’s a reassessment of how events fit into Radio One?

Both national events at the network and local events are all dependent on two revenue streams: sponsorship dollars and admission dollars. Those are both dependent on how many sponsors out there have the budgets to do events. And the more events you have, the more it dilutes their budgets, and that makes an event less profitable. We’re also looking at more partnerships. We have now partnered with Universal Soul Circus in several of our markets. We focus on certain things and they focus on other things. But it is a true partnership so when we do an event we don’t hold all the risk, and neither do they.

Are you putting any more emphasis on new business development?

Radio, like every mature medium, is facing attrition. It always has, but now there’s even more competition locally from digital. So we’re always looking for new business. There are key accounts in each marketplace that our reps focus on breaking into – entry level accounts that can be developed into larger accounts over the long-term. But that’s nothing new.

How are you positioning radio to advertisers?

We’re unique. At this point of time, all of our stations are geared toward the African-American community. We’re much more involved with the community. We don’t operate urban formatted radio stations. Urban is our marketplace. So we no longer see ourselves as radio stations in each of these markets, but we see ourselves as a conduit to the African-American marketplace. When we approach advertisers most of the time the majority of it is still radio, but it may also be things that include digital, social or local events, but with the common theme being we’re the way to reach African Americans in that area.

We have to ask: what’s Radio One’s new corporate name?

I can’t tell you that, you will have to wait for that to actually happen. It’s going to happen later this year.

Let’s talk business. How does political spending look this year?

We were hopeful it was going to be bigger. But it is still too earlier to tell. The primary season was pretty good for us because there was a competitive Democratic primary between Hillary and Bernie and our stations are obviously going to primarily appeal to the Democrats. We also have stations in some critical states like Ohio where we have three markets. We also operate in Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina which everybody is saying are going to be critical toss-up states. So we still anticipate it to be a strong year, but it’s a political year like none of us has ever seen.

Are local candidates and issues giving you reason for optimism?

It really comes down to the competitive nature of the race. So if you look at the House of Representatives, because of the way they have reconfigured a lot of the districts, they aren’t competitive anymore as to whether they go Democrat or Republican—it’s really more the primary process that dictates who ultimately is going to be the winner in that race. The Senate is much more key this year because it’s a tossup for control, so those races will pour a lot of money in. And local races are always competitive for us. A lot of markets have tax hikes or school tax levies that have to go to a vote, so we benefit when there are referendums. There’s a school tax referendum in Cleveland for example this year and our stations benefit from that. But it’s very hard to predict going forward. We have a conscientious effort on political. We have a person on the corporate level who focuses on political and governmental business and that trickles down to a specialist at each of our market clusters who focuses on political. Our goal is to not let a race go by that we are not at least in contact with the candidates or their campaign. It’s all over the news that Trump is going to start talking to minorities. \If he does that, we potentially would get that because radio is the best way to reach African Americans on a local basis.

How big a political bump are you expecting this year?

It will be comparable to past presidential years when political revenue is generally a third to 50% higher.

How much of your revenue comes from the presidential race compared to local races?

It is hard to tell. Every given year is different. For us when President Obama was at the top of the ticket, presidential money wasn’t as significant because the African American vote was very strong for him and they came out to vote for him. This year I would guess that the Democrats will spend much more money for turn out-the-vote efforts because Hillary is a different candidate.

So how does business look overall to you this year?

I was very encouraged by the first half of the year. The second half of the year has turned out to be much more of a battle. Business now is much more last minute than it has ever been, both nationally and locally, so it’s much harder to predict. So the fight goes on every day. In the old days you would go into a month and you would pretty much know where you are going to be. Now we’re at the last week of a month and dollars are still coming in. The business is much more last minute transactional than it ever used to be. I’m actually optimistic that we will end up with a good year, from both a combination of the regular efforts and the political ads on top of it. But it’s a tough fight every day.

Anything you think radio people should be more focused on?

We all have to focus both nationally and locally to bringing in more advertisers to our medium. Radio is still the best vehicle for reach. It’s still a frequency medium. It is still the number one medium for out of home. We don’t get the sexy headlines that the digital space does but radio is still a very cost effective medium and sometimes we forget that every day there is somebody new in a decision-making process, at an advertiser or agency, and we have to keep making that pitch and educating that community.

Is there anything that worries you?

The general media marketplace and the general economy because we’re much more governed now by market conditions than just our own condition. If the radio marketplace is healthy or the general economy is healthy, then we’re going to be healthy. If the radio marketplace is weak or the general market is weak, then we’re going to be weak. We’re much more challenged by variables that we don’t have control over. I tell my managers that we have to focus on what we can control. What I worry about is those things that I can’t control.

That said, you sound pretty optimistic about business and radio in general.

I always believe that if you do whatever you are capable of doing with the things you can control, ultimately you will do better than everybody else. So that is ultimately optimistic because even if things are bad, I always believe you can do better. So I’m a believer in focusing on what’s controllable and I tell my managers that every day. If you focus on what you can control, then you will do better in down times and you will do better in good times because you will have controlled more variables than somebody who is not focusing on what they can control.

Now that you’re running the company why are you still going on sales calls?

If I go to a market I may do as many as two or three in a day. It’s helpful because in a lot of markets with a particularly difficult account if you call the advertisers and say the president of our division is in town and would like to meet with you, it gets you a meeting that might be hard for just an account executive or sales manager to get. That opens the door to at least having communication. Or even just as a thank you call to one of our biggest advertisers just to thank them for their business – that means a lot. To me, ultimately, my job is to help the stations and the network do as well as they can do. [Radio One CEO] Alfred [Liggins] goes on sales calls too. We’re a sales culture and our belief is whatever we can do to help convince an advertiser to buy us and our medium, whether it’s radio, television, or interactive, we should do it. Who better represents the company than the senior management? It goes a long way to creating relationships in an industry that has moved away from relationships.